


Now and Forever

by firelizardkimi



Category: Haven (TV)
Genre: F/M, Family Feels, Long Drabble, Married Life, PWP without Porn, Pancakes, Post-Finale, haven headcanon, multiple timeskips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-13
Updated: 2018-03-17
Packaged: 2019-03-30 22:50:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13961754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/firelizardkimi/pseuds/firelizardkimi
Summary: She never expected to settle down, but coming to Haven has been like coming home.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Bits and pieces of this have been fluttering around my head since the finale first aired. I recently finished a binge re-watch of the entire series, and the rest of it kind of fell into place.
> 
> Un-beta'd.

Paige never expected to settle down, but then that deer (moose?) ran right in front of her, and her frantic swerve to avoid it left her broken down on the side of the road. She never believed in love at first sight, either, but then Nathan tapped on her window, and she had just been smitten. Seeing him gave her the oddest sense of deja vu; it was like she'd met him before, like she _knew_ him, but she's (mostly) sure she hasn't, doesn't. But... maybe she does know him? He certainly seemed to know her.

He'd looked like he'd seen a ghost. His eyes had widened, his mouth fallen slightly agape, and the word _Parker?_ (at first, she'd misunderstood as “park her,” but hindsight is 20/20) fell from his lips like a whispered prayer, half-unbelieving. Their whole interaction had been so _familiar_ (he was so awkward and shy, why did she always go for the shy ones?), it just felt right. Love at first sight was something for fairy tales, but something about Nathan drew her to him. The way he looked at James, eyes filled with warmth and love (and pride? Why would he be proud of her son?). And he liked pancakes. That had to count for something.

That first drive into town was a little disorienting in its familiarity. Even Joe's Haven Diner, which really did have excellent pancakes, was like coming home. She wasn't exactly unaware of the odd looks people gave her, but Nathan was a pretty intriguing distraction. He let her buy his breakfast (she had smashed his fingers in the car door, after all), and then offered to help her find a place to stay. His friend, Gloria, had a spare room, he said, and she was raising her infant grandson. Meeting Gloria was another odd experience: she'd stared at Paige for a moment, taking in the car seat and infant in her arms, and then given Nathan a long, hard stare, to which Nathan responded silently with a slight smile and a quirk of the eyebrow, before turning to look at Paige herself. That smile, though, suffused her soul with such warmth that she had to smile back.

Nathan was a frequent visitor at Gloria's as Paige settled in to life in Haven. He helped her find part-time work at the local newspaper (the Haven Herald was looking for a secretary/typist, and Dwight was totally fine with her bringing a baby to work), helped her with James when she needed a babysitter (he was a different person around babies, and he took care of James as if the boy were his own son), took her out while Vicky or Gloria babysat (it wasn't always for pancakes, either, though that was a frequent meal choice). Any time she needed anything, he was always there, and it just felt _right_ that way. And while the sensation of deja vu faded over time, being in Haven still made her feel like she was walking through a dream – familiar, yet not, like there was something she was missing that was just out of her grasp. 

Eventually, he asked her to move in. “Are we going steady, now?” she'd teased, and he'd just looked at her with those eyes, filled with such love for her, and for James, and had smiled and given that little laugh that she loved so much, and said, “Yeah, I guess we are.” And when, a few months later, he proposed to her (on the anniversary of her arrival in Haven), she had no other answer but yes. Because she had known, from the moment she met him on the outskirts of town, that he was the one for her. Their wedding was surprisingly well-attended, for he seemed to know pretty much everyone in town. When the pastor asked for any objections, for a brief moment, at the back of the crowd, she spotted a man she'd never seen before: tall, with a long, thin face, slicked back hair and a goatee. He made eye contact with her and smiled a sad sort-of half-smile. But when she blinked and looked again, he was gone. She mentioned him to Nathan that night, and he froze for just the tiniest moment, a stillness (a fear?) that she had never seen before, before denying knowing anyone by that description in Haven, though she caught a certain sadness in his eyes before he pulled her closer to him. She let him, let herself be comforted by his warmth and presence, breathing in his scent and letting their heartbeats align and her worries be soothed away.

 

***

 

He froze like that again only one other time, when James was two. It was early in the morning, the sun just starting to stream through the window, and James was not awake yet. They were laying entwined together – well, as entwined as he could be with her six-month-pregnant body (twins, they were having _twins_ ) – with his chin on her head, and her nose in the hollow of his neck. It was her favorite time of day (his too, she'd asked), when they could just, for a few moments, be them before the day really started, that deep breath before the plunge into another day with a rambunctious two-year-old. She pulled her head back, craning her neck to look up at him, the sunlight gilding the line of his neck and catching on the stubble of his jaw. He looked down at her with that smile of his (it got her every time, damn him), and ran a finger down her cheek, pushing aside a few strands of hair so he could see her eyes better.

“What do you think about Charlotte Mara for the girl's name?”

He froze then, just for a second, his hand pausing in its trip down her face, before he let out the breath he'd unconsciously held. “I- I don't know.” He hesitated. “Can I think about it?”

She nodded, and he drew her back in to his embrace, resting his chin on her head again while she curled against him. And a few days later, he came back with his counter-offer – Audrey, instead of Mara (something about a bad break-up with an ex, he says, which she can understand, after James' father, William). She rolled the name around a bit in her mind before agreeing. A week later, he asked if they can call the boy-twin Duke. She can pick the middle name, he says, which seems like a good compromise to both of them. So, when the twins are born, they are Charlotte Audrey and Duke Vincent (she's not sure where she got that name from, but Nathan was on board and it just seemed to fit), and everyone comes to coo over the babies, and say how much Charlotte looks like Paige, while Duke is the spitting image of his dad. If some of them throw Nathan a sideways glance at the boy's name, she doesn't notice. She does see the man again, the one from her wedding. He watches from across the street as they take the babies home, but a car drives by and he is gone before she can call out to him.

 

***

 

She had hoped that it would stop, but she still sees the tall man around town, though no one else seems to notice him. He generally keeps his distance, hovering at the fringe of the playground where James and Aaron play while she and Gloria and Vicky look after the twins, but he always seems to disappear when she tries to get a better look at him. When she asks Gloria and Vicky about him, they exchange a look (everyone in Haven seems to know something she doesn't, like why some people in town still seem to avoid her, even though she's been here for over three years now – something about some troubles in the town's past, though what could trouble an idyllic little town like Haven, she's not sure she'll ever know). Gloria is the one who tells her to ask Nathan, and Vicky nods silent agreement at her side.

She doesn't ask right away, but then she notices that Duke seems to be able to see the man, too, and the man seems to be _talking to him_ , and Duke is talking back (the twins are only eighteen months, but they have some words). And when she asks this time (crying, upset, because this is _her son_ , and if he's in danger she needs to know), Nathan doesn't freeze, but instead sighs and sits on the couch and beckons her over. And he takes her in his arms and tells her about his best frenemy, who died while trying to fix the Troubles (which seems to be a proper noun for him) which plagued Haven for years before she came along, and that their son is his namesake, and Tall Duke (as she thinks of him) is like the town ghost, but he doesn't appear to just anyone. While she doesn't love that he kept this from her (“It's been _three and a half years_ , Nathan!”), she does understand a little why he did, and that feeling of being slightly out-of-place eases a bit, though she still feels like there's pieces missing, gaps in her understanding of this town. But she lets it go (mostly, anyway), because she really does love him, and she knows that he loves her, too.

 

***

 

It's a few years later when she finds the picture in his desk, a pencil portrait of _her_ (she recognizes it as Vicky's handiwork, but it's dated before she even got here), that she confronts him. James and the twins are at a sleepover with Aaron at Gloria's (they're six-almost-seven and four now, how did the time go by so fast?) with Dwight and Lizzy there to help so that Mommy and Daddy can have a date night. They stay in, and he makes her pancakes, but when she pulls out the drawing, he just looks at it (at _her_ ), his eyes filled with and indefinable sadness. “Who is she?” she demands. Her throat is tight, but she _will not cry_ , not now, not until he explains. “And don't try to tell me that it's me. Vicky always dates her artwork. She drew this before I came to Haven.”

He turns his gaze to her face, his eyes bright with tears of his own. He has to swallow convulsively a few times before he can speak. “Her name was Parker. Audrey Parker.” His voice is rough with restrained emotion, and she recognizes with a start her daughter's middle name. “She was... special. To me. To Haven. She helped us. She saved us.” He closes his eyes briefly, then meets her gaze again. “She was you. Or, you were her. It's... complicated.”

“Complicated,” she echoes, thunderstruck. “How could I be her?” she muses, more to herself than to him. “How could she be me?” But then, like a trickle of water, the images start to filter in, passing before her eyes like a slideshow. “I loved you then, too,” she murmurs, and he starts with surprise.

“Parker?” he breathes (now she's sure that's what he said when they first met).

She shakes her head. “No, I'm still Paige. But,” and she pauses as information sifts through her brain. “She's in here with me. Audrey. Maybe she always was. I remember her, remember being her, but it's like... watching a movie you've already seen. Or a camera that's just out of focus. I know what happened, but I didn't live it. Not in this lifetime, anyway.” She looks up at him and is startled to see Tall Duke standing in the corner and gives him a small smile. “Duke's here.”

 _Took you long enough,_ Duke's lips don't move, but his voice whispers in her mind.

“What?” Nathan whirls around in his chair, expecting to see his son.

_He always was slow to catch on._

“No, Tall Duke. Your – our – friend. I think,” she pauses a moment to gather her thoughts. “I think he's been watching out for you. For us. And for our Duke.”

_Gotta make sure my namesake lives up to my legacy_

“Well, that's not gonna happen,” she says, and laughs a bit through her tears, hearing his subvocal chuckle in her head. With Audrey's memories inside her, she knows now why everyone always treated her so strangely, half-grateful, half-terrified. They didn't know if her presence in town meant that the Troubles were coming back again. When she looks up again, eyes clear, Duke has faded from view. _Gotta do some things without my help,_ his voice whispers in her mind. She takes a deep breath and focuses on Nathan, who is still looking around for his disembodied friend. “Nathan.” She reaches out to touch his hand on the table.

He immediately snaps back to the moment. “Paige?” His hand turns to hold hers.

She nods, reaching out for his other hand, so she can hold on to him, too. “It's still me.” She hesitates a moment. “Is that okay?”

He nods, pulling her around the table to him so that she is seated on his lap, and wraps his arms around her waist. “I love you,” he says. “I have always loved you. Not the personality you were, but the person you are.” He tightens his grip on her, and she feels, as always, safe/warm/comforted/ _home_ in his embrace. “You?”

She looks down at him, drinking in the planes of his face, the stubble, the earnest, hopeful look in his eyes. “Of course I love you, you idiot.” She leans down and kisses him, feeling him kiss her back, feeling the love that he has for her, for the kids, for all of them, and knowing that this is exactly where she is supposed to be.

 

 


	2. Postscript

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every story has an ending

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I HAD MORE INSPIRATION and wasn't 100% satisfied with the original ending so I made you a postscript

It's harder than she thought it would be. Nathan has been slipping away from her for a while now, lost in memories of years past, when the Troubles were all that anyone could think about. He still looks at her the same way, though, and if he sometimes forgets and calls her Audrey, she pretends not to notice. Charlotte barely twitched the first time it happened, though she did give her mother a sideways glance, checking to make sure Paige was okay, too.

They'd told the kids about Paige's complicated history when they were old enough to start asking questions about why Mommy never seemed to look any older but Daddy kept getting more and more gray hairs. The explanations were simplistic at first, but as the years went by they were able to go more and more in-depth in the details. They'd promised each other, on that night she had confronted him with the drawing, that they wouldn't keep secrets from the kids once they were old enough to understand. There were enough secrets in Haven without this one weighing them down.

Ghost-Duke's visits had continued through the years. The kids thought of him as “Uncle Duke,” and delighted in his stories of his exploits as a smuggler (cleared with Nathan and Paige and appropriately edited, of course). As they got older, they saw him less and less, though he still showed up for important occasions (weddings and college graduations and the like). And as Nathan slipped further and further into the past, Duke started showing up to talk with him about the old days, and the Troubles, and even their childhood. It seemed to calm Nathan, more than even Paige's presence could.

And he was here now, at Nathan's side, silently watching Paige and the children. James sat across from his mother, stoic as always, his father's son through and through. Duke and Charlotte were in the corner, fingers interlinked as they leaned their heads against each other. Paige smooths the hair back from Nathan's face, and lets her fingers trace their way down his cheek and across the stubble on his jawline. Her eyes catch Ghost-Duke's in the corner, and he nods almost imperceptibly.

_It's time._

She nods, blinking back the tears. “Time to go,” she whispers. The boys rise and, working together, they all help Nathan into James' minivan. He can still walk, but it's slow progress. She sits in the back with Nathan, and Charlotte, while her boys ride up front. It's only a twenty minute drive to the place the Armory once stood, but she wants every moment with them that she can have. When they get there, she can see the Armory, as it ever was, waiting there. She looks at James and the twins, and she knows they can't see it. This time, it's just for her.

They make their way up to the top of the steps, matching their pace to Nathan's slow, shuffling gait. Before she can knock on the door, it swings open of its own accord. She hears Charlotte's swift indrawn breath as Vince appears at the threshold. He doesn't say anything, doesn't need to. She's ready to go.

She turns to face her children. She hugs each of them in turn, cupping James' cheek in one palm, smoothing Duke's hair back, wiping tears from Charlotte's chin. They don't speak, but the strength with which they hug her in return tells her all of the words that they cannot say. She smiles at them as they hug Nathan, too, reminding him in whispers just how much he means to them. He smiles at them, knowing they belong to him, but not able to put the pieces of how they fit into his life together. When they are finished, she takes his hand, turning him gently towards her, and his face lights up.

“There you are, Parker.”

“Here I am.” She takes his hand and smiles at him, gesturing towards Vince and the open door. “Time to go, Detective.”

He shuffles forward into the Barn, and in the instant he crosses the threshold, there is a flash of light and he disappears. Even James can't suppress the gasp at his sudden disappearance. She follows him, turning just before the doorway to look at them again.

“Take care of each other.” She finds and holds each of their eyes in turn. “Don't worry about us. We'll be around.” James' eyes are bright with unshed tears. Charlotte's tears have run tracks down her cheeks. Duke looks down so she can't see as the droplets run down his nose. She smiles and steps back through the door.

The Barn is the same as she remembers it, bare white walls stretching into infinity. Vince appears beside her, and she looks up at him. “Did it work?”

“See for yourself.”

She follows his gaze, and sees Nathan standing there. Not old Nathan, who she sent through the door, but _her_ Nathan, Nathan in his prime. His eyes light up and he strides over to her, catching her up in his arms and swinging her around before crushing a kiss to her lips (Vince looks away politely, pretending not to see). He breaks the kiss and rests his forehead against hers, eyes closed, sharing breath.

“We did it, didn't we?”

She nods against him, knowing he can feel it. “Yeah, we did.” She opens her eyes looks over at Vince. “Right?”

Vince nods. “With the two of you here, after everything you've been through, there's enough love to power the aether in the Barn for millennia.” He hesitates. “You won't be able to leave again, you know.”

She laughs, wrapping her arms around Nathan's waist even as he wraps his arms around her in return. “We know. We're here. Together. Now and forever. That's all that matters.” She looks back up at Nathan, who returns her gaze with that _look_.

“Now and forever,” he repeats, and pulls her lips to his again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for sticking around for the ride! Hope you enjoyed.


End file.
